i just googled "free system monitoring software" and found lots of stuff;

you want to watch for more than just the SQL server service being up or down; you've also got to see if there is a network issue, or even if the whole server is offline/down.

Lowell--help us help you! If you post a question, make sure you include a CREATE TABLE... statement and INSERT INTO... statement into that table to give the volunteers here representative data. with your description of the problem, we can provide a tested, verifiable solution to your question! asking the question the right way gets you a tested answer the fastest way possible!

river1 (12/28/2009)I don't need to see if my SQL Server service is down...what i need to know is if the server it self is down

In that case, you don't want something installed on the database servers, as it'll be kinda hard for a program installed on a server to notify you that the server it is installed on is down. You need a centralised diagnostic server. Get demos of the ones that people have mentioned in this thread and try them out.